A Wrinkle in Time

A Wrinkle in TimeI'm a little weird. I'm an adult, have no kids that can read in my life, but am fascinated by the children's books of my youth. I recently went into a great bookstore in Seattle- Inner Chapters -and was wowed not by their huge selection, but by their cozy section of children's books, complete with nothing less than a collection of Newbery Award Winning books. I was in heaven, especially when I saw, "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle.

In the book, she takes an awkward teen-aged girl, her brother, a genius psychic of a 2-year old who understands that not all people have the same depth of understanding and a popular but misunderstand teenaged basketball player between worlds in a quest to find the girl and the toddler's missing father, who has gotten trapped in another world. The characters are led by a trio of stars (no, not movie stars, but actual stars in the universe, who have taken on the form of quirky old ladies with odd names) through different worlds. The book is loosely based on the ideas of physics such as tesseracts and parallel worlds that must have been absolutely ground-breaking in 1962 when the book was first published in the United States.

The characters, besides being given a great adventure through what seems to be parallel worlds, also learn lessons about their strengths and weaknesses. Meg, the awkward girl, realizes that her stubbornness and her other weaknesses, are, in an alternate reality, her greatest strength. The young boy, whose intelligence is hidden to others by his silence, realizes that his pride is indeed, his greatest weakness. Thinking that he can conquer all because of his great intelligence and mysterious pyschic powers and doing so, are not always the same thing.

Some of the worlds the kids visit are fascinating as well, including one Stepford type world in which no one steps out of line and all of the houses are the same. Sample quotes from inhabitants?

“The children in our section never drop balls! They’re all perfectly trained. We haven’t had an Aberration for three years.” 

The woman does not explain what an aberration is and the children don’t ask., leaving them and the reader with an ominous feeling.  Sounds a little bit like the suburbs to me.

The book, surely inspired by Alice in Wonderland, probably influenced Harry Potter as well. The book is not quite as well-written as either of those, but the story is fascinating and never ceased to hold my interest.